Philosophy Quotes

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

Bertrand Russell

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.

John Burroughs

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Bertrand Russell

There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Albert Camus

Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.

Robert M. Pirsig

Thought is what we start from: the simple, intimate, immediate datum. Matter is the inferred thing, the mystery.

C.S. Lewis

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

Blaise Pascal

You cannot conceive of the many without the one.

Plato

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

Bertrand Russell

The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

C.S. Lewis

But this wealth of information produced little or no insight.

Stephen King

I have gained this by philosophy that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Aristotle

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

Aristotle

Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.

Stephen King

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?

Victor Hugo

The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

Oscar Wilde

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson